Gil Clancy, 88, a boxing trainer who helped lead Emile Griffith to welterweight and middleweight titles, died Thursday at an assisted-living facility on Long Island, N.Y., his family said.

Born in Rockaway Beach, N.Y., in 1922, Clancy boxed in the Army during World War II. After his discharge he studied physical education at New York University, earning a master's degree in teaching and paying tuition by training fighters. Eventually, he rose to prominence as a corner man.

Griffith captured the welterweight title from Benny "The Kid" Paret in April 1961 with a 13th-round knockout. Six months later, Griffith lost the title to Paret in a split decision, then regained it in a controversial rematch with Paret in 1962.

With Clancy shouting encouragement from the corner, Griffith knocked Paret unconscious, and Paret stayed propped against the ropes while Griffith hit him repeatedly for several seconds before referee Ruby Goldstein stopped the fight. Paret never regained consciousness and died 10 days later.

After retiring from training, Clancy worked as a TV commentator.

He was elected to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1993.

Zoogz Rift

Punk rock musician

Zoogz Rift, 57, a punk rock musician whose experimental style garnered comparisons with Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa, died March 22 at Encino Hospital of complications from diabetes, said his partner, Laura Rift.

Rift's music "both challenges and irritates, insults and amuses," Jeff Spurrier wrote in The Times in 1985. "His songs are musical mud pies lobbed at the mainstream market, fragmentation earbombs set in often bizarre meters with arrangements that both soothe and sear."

Rift was born Robert Pawlikowski on July 10, 1953, in Paterson, N.J., but grew up in Parsippany, N.J. He moved to Los Angeles in 1977 after starting his career in the early 1970s. He played in New York punk rock clubs such as CBGB before moving to California.

His first album was 1979's "Idiots on the Miniature Golf Course." Rift recorded steadily through the 1980s.

He also was a painter and a pro wrestling personality with the Universal Wrestling Federation beginning in the 1990s. Rift had several health problems in recent years and started oil painting about 2002 after finding it increasingly difficult to play guitar, Laura Rift said.

Laura and Zoogz Rift were divorced but had reconciled years ago, she said.

Carl Bunch, 71, a drummer for Buddy Holly and the Crickets who was in the hospital with frostbite when Holly and other members of the Winter Dance Party Tour were killed in a 1959 plane crash, died Saturday at Antelope Valley Hospital. The cause was complications from diabetes, his family said.

Bunch, then 19, thought of the tour as an audition for a permanent position with the band, he told The Times in 1993. He joined the tour weeks before the tour bus broke down Feb. 1, 1959, in a Wisconsin snowstorm, and he ended up with frostbitten feet. Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. "the Big Bopper" Richardson died two days later in a plane crash.

FOR THE RECORD:An earlier version of this article said drummer Carl Bunch, who played with Buddy Holly and the Crickets, was born in Big Springs, Texas. The town is Big Spring.

"I couldn't believe it," Bunch said in The Times interview. "I couldn't see Ritchie dead. We had become close."

Born Nov. 24, 1939, in Big Spring, Texas, Bunch took up the drums as a teenager to help recover from leg surgery.

In the 1980s, he earned degrees in theology, biblical counseling and psychotheology from Friends International Christian University in Merced. He ran a Christian ministry and was a substance-abuse counselor before poor health led him to retire in the early 1990s.

A father of three, he was married to his wife, Dorothy, for 44 years.

In 2000, Bunch played drums in a re-creation of the 1959 tour and signed autographs as "the Frostbitten Cricket."

David E. Davis Jr.

Founder of Automobile magazine

David E. Davis Jr., 80, the founder of Automobile magazine who was widely considered the dean of automobile critics, died Sunday at a hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich., of complications from bladder cancer surgery.

Davis had twice been editor of Car and Driver when he split from the magazine in 1985 and started Automobile the next year with financial backing from media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

The magazine was aimed at auto buyers "with cash for upscale, trendy cars … who like their reading material — even in a car magazine — to be literate, stylish and, yes, trendy," the Miami Herald said in 1986.

Born in 1930 in Burnside, Ky., Davis developed an enthusiasm for cars at 14 after a neighbor gave him a ride in a DKW Roadster.

After briefly studying at Olivet College in Michigan, he sold Volkswagens and men's clothing.

He tried auto racing but rolled an MG at a Sacramento track in 1955 and had to undergo 18 months of reconstructive surgery.

Turning to publishing, Davis sold advertising for Road & Track magazine and wrote automotive copy for a Detroit firm. By 1962, he was writing for Car and Driver and was soon the magazine's editor and publisher.

Many of his Car and Driver columns were reprinted in "Thus Spake David E: The Collected Wit and Wisdom of the Most Influential Automotive Journalist of Our Time" (1999).

James Pritchett, an actor who played Matt Powers on the NBC soap opera "The Doctors" from 1963 to 1982 and won an Emmy for the role in 1978, died March 15 at his home in New York, his family announced without giving the cause. He was 88.

James M. Roberts, a longtime executive with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, including 18 years as executive director, died Monday of emphysema at his home in Rancho Bernardo, Calif., the academy announced. He was 87.

Pat Rowe, former longtime spokeswoman for the National Weather Service in Los Angeles, died Saturday at Sherman Oaks Health & Rehab of complications from a fall in December, her family said. She was 82.